As I mowed the lower field, filled with timid yellow clover hugging the ground, and robust white clover, I was reminded of my grandmother who chose another country at the age of 19 because the country of her birth held no future—under the thumb of Britain. They were second-class citizens in their own country.
She didn’t realize that she’d still be a second-class citizen even in San Francisco. America’s melting pot did not include the Irish or anyone from the Mediterranean because, Catholicism or orthodoxy. It all went back to Luther nailing that reform on the church door, giving protestants free rein to persecute those who clung to the old faith.
My grandmother brought with her the seeds of freedom and supplanted them in the garden of her heart because the real garden was decades from fruition. She brought with her small shamrocks. the seamróg (sean- óg) the young clover Trifolium dubnium that John Gerard identified as an English white-flowered species—not the yellow-flowered Irish shamrock, but the white one. It seems that the Elizabethans had to colonize the shamrock too.
Linnaeus noted that the Irish ate it—not realizing that Ireland was in a prolonged famine that would end with the Great Famine, An Gort Mor, not famine, but genocide. An béal bocht, the poor mouth, the Irish were reduced to eating the grasses where even the cattle could find no nourishment.
The Irish took to eating the grasses when there was nothing left to eat, and as I cleared the lower field, I thought of my grandmother who passed down the stories of how her family survived the famine, how her father‘s family ate the massive mangles, turnips meant for the cattle. The shamrock became a badge of courage.
Spencer referred to them as an anatomies of death, condemning the native Irish, those second class people in his adopted homeland, who lived a hand to mouth and their existence as bandits. He said all this to justify the superiority of British rule. The land that gave him The Fairie Queen. He said the Irish drown their sorrow in shamrocks and whiskey. The downfall of the Irish sham of history created to assuage British occupation. It became a symbol of freedom and of resistance like the Thistle of Scotland.
And when Queen Elizabeth visited Ireland with tiny shamrocks embroidered on her gown, she could not erase the sordid history of the crown. The shamrock and the harp on the flag of Ireland— blue for the freedom of the sky and the gold of the sun because that’s all there was left.
My grandmother sent money home to her sisters and brothers to bring the next one out. Then she joined the ancient order of the Hibernians because the poor mouth could not be silenced.
